2017 Tax Transformer Stories

Creating Synergy between Tax and Accounting with a Single System

Challenge
Kiewit’s accounting team manages the income tax provision, which in the past, created a disconnect between Accounting and Tax around tax adjustments. Accounting’s Excel-based provision process led to errors and unreliable data. The return-to-provision (RTP) required four full-time staff members plus two temps, and more than four months to complete.

Solution
Now, with Corptax, Kiewit’s accounting department completes more than 270 provisions each quarter for corporations and partnerships operating in multiple taxing jurisdictions. Tax Compliance prepares U.S. corporate, sponsored U.S. partnership, and Canadian corporate returns within Corptax as well.

Results
With two departments using a single system for the tax lifecycle, Kiewit can now:

• Copy 90% of return data for RTP without manual intervention
• Reduce time to complete RTP by 75% and free up staff members by 50%
• Minimize and easily identify true-up rate reconciliation items on financial statements
• Give external auditors confidence in the accuracy of 32 financial statement tax balances and footnotes
• Run RTP reports for analysis within seconds versus weeks
• Rely on the provision summary report to determine their quarterly payments
• Depend on more accurate, timely, and reliable provision numbers

Meeting BEPS CbC Reporting Requirements

Challenge
To alleviate a manually-intensive process, First Data needed an automated way to reconcile the 10-K to the Country-by-Country (CbC) report and find detail for potential country requests. Time-consuming data handling involved inter-company revenue, expenses, and interest; non-entered cash taxes; accrued/deferred taxes; stated capital amounts; and more.

Solution
Building on the strong foundation they already had in Corptax, with trusted data at the ready, they further streamlined the process with:

• Corptax BEPS CbC and Corptax Office
• Corptax Web Data Connections and saved contexts
• Automated entries and user-defined Corptax entity properties

Results
By automating and managing data at the right levels, First Data now:

• Benefits from compliance that’s 95% done before opening any 5471/8858/8865 returns
• Reduces the year-end NOL process by approximately 90% to 30 minutes
• Starts the provision-to-return process approximately 80% earlier – finishing in less than two hours
• Has a repeatable process for subsequent years

Cutting Consolidation Time with Corptax Office

Challenge
Koch Industries reconciled over 700 entities with their consolidated return—a process that included a workbook for each consolidated position with up to 50+ worksheets. Managing workpapers to accommodate entity and account changes took 500 hours, annually.

Solution
Using Corptax Office advanced features, the team:

• Creates queries for consolidated positions and eliminations (POV)
• Creates a Data Connection for each query (Advanced Queries)
• Pulls queries into Excel in a pivot table

Results
The team now:

• Saves 100+ hours in labor alone
• Refreshes workpapers with minimal changes to annual roll forwards
• Experiences time gains of 80% – 90% for every workpaper
• Recalculates and refreshes workpaper files in minutes instead of many hours
• Simplifies provision-to-return with streamlined data pulls from Corptax to various provision systems

Creating Nimble Global Tax Processes

Challenge
A mix of different vendor tools, Morgan Stanley’s provision process demanded numerous data extraction steps and manual Excel templates to review and consolidate for federal, state, and international—exposing them to risks in data integrity, calculation accuracy, and file-linking.

• 1400+ ledgers (200+ legal entities) and 100+ jurisdictions (international/state) caused long-running exports and roadblocks
• Data export was manual and not centrally managed, making it highly susceptible to errors
• Decentralized processes across functional teams resulted in inconsistent templates and additional consolidation work

Solution
Use Office POV, Named Profiles, Jurisdiction Groups, and reports on Corptax Web to further leverage data in Corptax.

Results
Morgan Stanley’s new templates are centralized and shared across functional areas, making their tax process more efficient, standardized, and streamlined—allowing them to:

• Save 600 hours per year using new Corptax Office templates
• Refresh templates with a single click
• Directly tap source systems to quickly pull custom datasets
• Use centralized templates to eliminate reconciliation work
• Control file maintenance with one staff member, reducing user errors
• Use enhanced exports from Corptax to increase automation

Enhancing Provision Automation Using Corptax BOTS

Challenge
Nationwide’s GAAP close must be completed in two days, leaving little time to waste. Manually importing trial balances, posting automated adjustments, and then printing reports for their smaller entities is time-consuming and demanding.

Solution
The Nationwide team uses Corptax BOTS and Data Exchange to import trial balances from their ledger system, post automated adjustments, and batch-process and print provision reports.

Results
With faster ways to automate tasks and share data, Nationwide can now:

• Analyze quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year data to ensure accurate answers and to investigate variances
• Spend less time on non-value added provision work
• Run Corptax BOTS daily through the GAAP 2-day and STAT 6-day closes for 65 entities, saving time formerly spent downloading new trial balances, importing data, and posting adjustments
• Use BOTS instead of staff-posted adjustments to eliminate risk of missing key auto-adjustments during close
• Kick-off the process ad hoc, if needed, and have new trial balances available on demand

Bringing Compliance and Provision Together

Challenge
Multiple entities, industries, and accounting systems hampered Westfield Insurance’s Excel-based consolidated income tax provision and compliance activities. Further, separate systems added time and risk to tax work.

• Reports and analyses created in Excel relied on complex formulas and linking, causing report format inconsistencies, consolidation challenges, and a high risk for errors
• Tax law changes, entity structure updates, and modifications to adjustments required continuous reengineering of workbook reports

Solution
Westfield Insurance implemented Corptax Provision and Compliance in a single, connected system.

Results
Automating provision and compliance work in one database enables Westfield Insurance to:

• Reduce provision and return cycles by 30%—making time for analysis and ad hoc/what-if scenarios for tax planning
• Decrease external audit team questions and boost internal reliance
• Improve calculations and eliminate constant manual intervention
• Reuse prepared provision data to complete annual tax returns and quarterly federal and state tax estimates
• Gain Corptax knowledge and expertise to streamline additional departmental processes